NJBM was an exciting time with a much-improved participation than last year. Overall we had an extremely fun time and although there was limited participation from the Christchurch chapter, we are optimistic about future involvement with them. On Saturday we had a group hang out in town, and we went treasure hunting with an app named geocache. Overall, thanks to the beautiful weather in Auckland the participants had a fun time and we feel like the overall community and friendship within CISV NZ JB was strengthened. The cohort of JB coming through seem to be very committed to CISV, and this is encouraging as hopefully, our JB can grow from strength to strength.
The Sunday was when we got down to the more serious side of the training. Held at the Titirangi Community House, the first activity was centred on restructuring our JB committee. We decided that we would have a bunch of teams to fulfil the roles of running our JB to improve the effectiveness on how it runs. Next year we are confident we will have youthful people in positions to run successful and productive JB events such as minicamps, fundraising events as well as social events. Furthermore, the JB learnt more about what the NJR (National Junior Representative) and in turn we discovered there were some who were keen on trying to apply for being an NJR.

The second activity of the day was run by the senior members of CISV Auckland. It consisted of portraying the purpose of JB in a fun, random way which included interpretive dance, rap and even a protest slogan. Afterwards, the group learnt about the five primary goals that the JB within CISV strives to achieve. We then had a rundown of the international structure of CISV and after this had a lunch consisting of good ol’ chippy sandwiches.
The final activity was held as a gameshow in which the groups had to create energisers and were consequently met with unfair criticism from a “Simon Cowell” persona. This activity aimed to show that feedback is critical. Both the way it is said as well as what is said is imperative to improve upon what is being done for future attempts.
Overall this NJBM was fun and exciting and hopefully, next year can be even better!